In civil rights era, Lamar Weaver was a fighter for justice (opinion from Roderick Royal)

The Rev. Lamar Weaver is a name hardly known, but it is synonymous with a pocket of white people who boldly pushed through Birmingham's gates of segregation to shake its foundation of intolerance and deference.

Weaver's journey as a civil rights activist began in the late 1950s as an ambulance driver who befriended several black funeral home directors and an often fiery and uncompromising black preacher, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.

A Presbyterian lay minister, Weaver was raised by a single mother and counted among his childhood memories befriended a black youth with whom he would often find boyish trouble, and his traveling along a back country road with his grandparents and, by chance, witnessing one of the "most horrible experiences" of his life: the mutilation of a young black teenager by "ax-welding, white-robed men."

His relationship with his black friend, memory of the mutilated black youth, and, perhaps, the sting and stigma of being poor and single-parented might have caused him to empathize with the plight of African-Americans in Birmingham.

Weaver's sense of right and wrong, by his own account, led him, as an adult student at the white Southeastern Bible College, to recruit and lead at least two other students in black voter-registration efforts and talks in small Alabama cities.

In the late 1950's, Weaver challenged Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor in a five- man race for office. As an anti-segregationist, Weaver's campaign promised fair hiring for black applicants in city jobs, and in an appearance before a large black audience at a local church, Weaver became "one of the first whites to identify with Shuttlesworth" and his Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights.

He became a marked man.

During the election campaign, Weaver recalled hearing gunfire in his direction as he would stand on the porch of his North Birmingham residence. North Birmingham, at the time, was a hub for members of the White Citizens Councils.

Not long after his activism and campaign began, Weaver's wife would take their young child and flee to north Alabama and, ultimately, divorce him.

In late 1957, Weaver was called by Shuttlesworth and told of his plan to integrate the "Whites Only" section of the downtown Terminal Station. Weaver decided to join the one-man, one-woman protest (Shuttlesworth's wife Ruby joined in) and was pelted and shoved by an angry segregationist crowd as he approached the station. After a handshake and brief conversation between the two men in the "Whites Only" waiting room, Weaver was accosted as he made his way back to his parked car. Once Weaver entered the vinyl-top car, the crowd attempted to overturn it.

Weaver was able to start the car and leave; however, he was pulled over by the Birmingham Police Department and given a ticket for "reckless driving and running a red light." On the court day, Municipal Judge Parker scolded Weaver for placing himself in harm's way and lectured him "in the danger of agitation." Weaver was fined $25.

Of course, Weaver lost the election, but his life remained continuously under threat even to the extent of once having to hide in a casket at the black Poole Funeral Home until he could safely leave the city. Weaver moved to Ohio and later would recommend his friend, Shuttlesworth, for nomination as pastor of a Cincinnati.

Birmingham City Council President Roderick Royal is an instructor of African-American History at Miles College and
UAB.Email: roderick1157@att.net